Southeast Asia’s toxic haze spurs calls for legal action against polluters

Smoke from Indonesia’s worst wildfires in a decade has blanketed Malaysia and Singapore over the past two months, prompting calls to hold polluters legally accountable. Cross-border haze has largely been blamed on land clearing by Indonesian palm oil plantation owners. The 2002 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution commits its 11 members to cooperate, but provides no judicial enforcement mechanism, and disputes must be settled through negotiation. Implementation has been slow: the treaty’s coordinating office in Jakarta opened only this April, nearly a quarter-century after it was envisioned.